TO F. V. LENGNIK

Written:Written on May 23, 1902Published:First published in 1928 in LeninMiscellany VIII.

      Sent from London to Samara.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1971,

      Moscow,Volume 36,

      page112.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Andso your task now is to turnyourselfinto a committee
for preparing the
congress,[1]to accept the Bundist into
this committee (after assessing himfrom every angle—
this N.B.!), and to push your own people through into
the largest number of committees possible, safeguarding
yourself and your people more than the apple of your eye,
until the congress. Remember: all this is of the utmost
importance! Be bolder, more pushy and more inventive in
this respect, and in all others, as discreet and as careful
as possible.

Wiseas serpents—and (with the committees: the
Bund[2]and St. Petersburg) harmless as doves.

Yoursever,Starik

[1]Areference to the re-establishment of the Organising Committee
for convening the Party’s Second Congress, as the first committee,
elected at the Belostok conference, had nearly all been arrested.
N.K. Krupskaya, informing F.V. Lengnik of this, wrote in her letter:
“Of all those elected to the committee for preparing the Congress,
only one man, a Bundist, escaped arrest. We are sending him to
you, and the two of you will have to make preparations for the
Congress. But you must be diplomatic with him and not show
your hand” =

(seeLenin Miscellany VIII, p. 238). In this way
Lengnik was to be co-opted to the Organising Committee. A
month later, Lenin wrote about it to I. I. Radchenko in St. 
Petersburg (see pp. 113–14).

The“Bundist” was K. Portnoi.

[2]Bund—General Jewish Workers’ Union of Lithuania, Poland
and Russia; was founded in 1897. It consisted mainly of Jewish
handicraftsmen from Russia’s Western regions. The Bund
conducted a nationalist and separatist policy in the Russian
working-class movement. Inside the R.S.D.L.P. it supported
opportunist and Menshevik views.